I interviewed Her Name Was Gisberta director Sérgio Galvão Roxo remotely ahead of the SXSW XR Experience 2024. See more context in the rough transcript below.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So continue my series of looking at different immersive stories from South by Southwest 2024. Today's episode is with a piece called Her Name Was Gisberta, which is a 360 video documentary that fills in the gaps of the life of Gisberta Salce, who's a trans woman who was tragically murdered by 14 young men in Portugal in 2006. So it recreates this investigatory timeline to comprehend what happened and experiments with some perspective taking within the context of the Fourth Act. I had a chance to talk to the director Sergio to unpack all the different dimensions of this DIY piece and some of the challenges of doing subtitles in the context of a piece that ends up being very dense in the way that it's exploring all these true crime elements to get to the bottom of what happened to Shizberta. So that's what we're covering on today's episode of the Wastes of VR podcast. So this interview with Sergio happened on Monday, March 4th, 2024. So with that, let's go ahead and Dive right in!
[00:01:39.834] Sérgio Galvão Roxo: And through that, I just kind of mixed my interest in VR, what I explored in media, the term immersive journalism by Noni Della Pena. So I kind of mixed all that and united with the fact that I'm a very tech enthusiast and decided, let's do it. Let's try it out and see if we can do it in a very low budget way. So I'm very new in VR. This is my first experience. So yeah, it's this.
[00:02:15.591] Kent Bye: Maybe give a bit more context as to your background and your journey into working with VR.
[00:02:20.792] Sérgio Galvão Roxo: Yeah. So I did my bachelor's in cinema. in traditional cinema in 2012. And since then, I've been working around communications in cultural spaces with the various cultural institutions. And I've made some movies, not many. I kind of fell out of joy with cinema. It's a hard profession here in Portugal. So I kind of just moved around in some workplaces, mainly communication. I stayed in I've worked in London and a few places, but then I came back to Portugal and decided around the pandemic to focus on my master's and get a master's. So I used that opportunity to create this project, to embrace in a new world of virtual reality. But my background, I've worked since a kid. I've been exploring through photography and video. I've been filming since a little kid using my V8, my mom's V8. So I kind of have a beautiful connection. with the power of image. I'm a very imaginative child. So I was imagining places. And so it all kind of fell into this idea of art and a way to express myself, express subjects that are important to me. And yeah.
[00:04:01.056] Kent Bye: Maybe you could give a bit more context for the project that you're showing here at South by Southwest. Her name was Gisberta.
[00:04:09.105] Sérgio Galvão Roxo: So Her Name Was Gisberta, it's a project that I created around the life of Gisberta Sals, which was a trans woman, a Brazilian trans woman, that was brutally murdered by 14 kids in Portugal. It's a very traumatic story around trans rights and trans lives in Portugal, and it was one of the most is the most mediatic case known, because Portugal is still a very transphobic country, even though he's a supposed safe haven for Brazilian trans people. We still have a lot of transphobia in this country. And so this project was created because I identify as a gay man and for me it was a very emotional and very troubled time when this story came out, when we found out that Gisbert was murdered and how she was murdered. So this project is an homage to her. Since I was doing this VR project around my master's, and my master's was about media, and most of the national media, Portuguese media, had a very transphobic attitude around the case and around her story. She was deeply ignored through the media. the memory of Gisberta was kind of lost around the subject because the focus was on the kids and more like to dismiss the intention of the kids and how the jury system kind of not worked around this case. And so it's a very difficult case here in our history, but a very important one because her life was lost and many trans legislation were enacted after her death. So in a way, a turning point in this country, even though we have quite a few rights in terms of trans people, we still have a very transphobic society. So this project culminated with the fact that I was exploring VR as a tool of social education and intervention. And so I mixed the fact that I was exploring that and also the fact that the story of Gisberto is a very important case for me and a very deep emotional story for me that I felt that wasn't really well told. And the focus of this project is to create an experience against transphobia, an experience of education, mainly focused on the Portuguese and Brazilian society, because Brazil is, it still is, the country with the most murder rate of trans people in the world. And Portugal is a safe haven for Brazilian trans people, which was the same thing that happened to Gisbert. And there's an important phrase that I discovered around this project. that Gisberta came to Portugal because she felt like in Europe, even though there was prejudice against trans people, she wouldn't be a victim of a hate crime. And it is exactly what happened to her. painful realization of how people and how this country is evolving, and how Brazil is still evolving as well, but still with the highest murder rates in the world. So basically, all of this, combinated with the fact that this project is based around 68 journalistic pieces, and various interviews with relatives and close friends of Gisberta, also some LGBTQIA plus activists. All of this information was collected to create the script. And during the creating of the project, I applied various empathy studies that I found in the academic papers. One of them was the virtual reality perspective taking tasks. which lets the viewer to imagine himself in the situation of Gisberta or imagine himself as a witness to the Gisberta's life. So this project is created around the humanization of Gisberta, so giving back the story that was missing on the newspapers and on the media. and allowing the viewer to experience her life as her. and not as the case or how the newspapers portrayed her. So it's trying to give back and to help people understand that trans people are people. And it's a very important, for me, it's a very important subject. And I've worked before in my previous films around LGBTQIA plus themes. And now this is a progression of that. I feel like it. But yeah, I think I have many things to tell about this project. I think I need to stop.
[00:09:45.246] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, I think that gives a really good, broad overview and context of this project. I guess one of the first questions I have, because of your background in film, what was the process that you went through to decide to tell this story in VR versus trying to tell it within 2D? What were the things that you really wanted to try to explore within the VR medium that you felt like the film medium may have been a little bit more constrained?
[00:10:09.187] Sérgio Galvão Roxo: My first discovery in VR was the visual storytelling, how we can use the space in 360 degrees. It's a new way to imagine how can we tell a story without being limited to the box of a plane or to the image. And I felt like VR had the possibility to bring people closer mainly because one of the studies that I found was in fact about prejudice. what they found out is that when we imagine a situation, we use your own prejudice. So if I tell you an example, imagine this, you'll look into your own memories and try to imagine that situation. And with VR, since all of our view camp is surrounded by the experience, we don't use those prejudice imaginations. We see what we are imagining. So that allowed me to see the VR as a very powerful tool against this very sensitive subject. Because how ideas of a trans person is around the media and the content that we consume. Because trans people represent a very small percentage of the population. So it's not like everyone has access to talk to a trans person and understand why they are who they are. And VR allowed me to create a space also that was not based on that prejudice and also that allowed me to grab all the important details of Gisbert's life and try to condensate 45 years of a life in one space. the flow of the project, the fact that you are immersed in her story, and also the use of animation for it, allow it a new way to experience her story. Because there were a few previous projects created around Gisberta's life, and the focus on the violence that happened to her, or the focus on showing the place where she died and everything around it, even though it's dramatic and it causes an impression and it's a well-known storytelling format for 2D. In VR we have a whole new experience of reality and how we can create the story and I think VR really offered me the possibility to have the most respect to Gisberta's story and to allow the viewers to travel through time and travel through her memories and through her stories without being limited to a small screen. And the fact that you can move yourself around that space, the fact that you can position yourself in her own shoes is an important subject that VR allows, especially VR in terms of social justice. There are few experiences around social justice in all of journalistic experiences around VR. They have all this focus in the fact that you can be there in a way, more presently than you can be around a 2D screen. So all of this, I believe, at the time when I was figuring out this project, I felt like, no, this makes sense. I believe this is the best way to create a tool that can be used for education and that can be used to really bring her story back.
[00:14:03.626] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I feel like that in trying to go back and reconstruct the story, I think there's a phrase that you say something, it's a story without a middle, and the way that we kind of know how it ends, but we don't know what happened in between. And so in a lot of ways, this film feels like it's trying to reclaim a lot of not only what happened in terms of digging through all of the different testimony and all the news articles, but also because of this transphobia in the context of which it happened, then there's other parts of the story that were lost. And so you're in some ways trying to recover that arc of that story. and with the art style that allows you to have this kind of impressionistic animation where you're not necessarily going into like the facts of the images, although you do have some photos and some videos that come up at different points, but there's a sort of art style that allows you to create this memory-like feeling that allows you to create this spatial journey that's trying to reconstruct the story that maybe isn't as well known to try to really do a tribute in a lot of ways memorial and honoring of the life of Gisberta, but wondering if you could just talk about that process of trying to reconstruct the story that doesn't have a middle.
[00:15:16.033] Sérgio Galvão Roxo: Yes, of course. The animation style was one of the most important parts of creating this project. How can we express all of this information in a way that feels like it can be realistic and also, at the same time, be able for the viewer to create a connection and not feel threatened about the information it's receiving. Because Her life story is filled with a lot of beautiful stories, but her death is very violent. And I wanted to create an experience that allows the user to, in a way, feel that violence, but not feel that violence immediately. Because We're creating a project for the people that need to see it, not for trans people in general, not for LGBTQ people, no, but for the people who really need to see it. Political agents, transphobic people, people who have questions regarding it. we have to really have the carefulness around the violence and how is that portrayed. So the animation style came also from reading some studies regarding the fact that we as a people in terms of VR have a difficult reaction to very detailed objects. We create an easier connection with objects that are not very really defined. So that was an important aspect that helped create this kind of animation. Also, it's slow-paced, very slow-paced in terms of animation, because the focus is around the story you're hearing and the information you're acquiring, and not to feel distracted about what you're actually seeing. It's not a lot of movement. Also in terms of the colors, one of the things that was important for me was the fact that in only one scene, the scenery is black. All is white, or off-white in this case. because her story is full of light and all of what happened to her is full of darkness. So I wanted to bring the light here and to focus on Zizperte and also the fact that she is the only colored character. All of the characters are this sort of beige brown colors and the focus is on her. She's the focus of this story. She was the one that was dehumanized by society and was villainized in the media. So we're bringing back that tribute to her. So all of these questions I had about how I can portray the life of someone and see how can we get closer to people that feel discomfort regarding trans people. So all of this information, we've been through various stages around this. In the beginning, I had a 3D model of the building where she died. I also used Street View images to see if I can do like an interactive map around her life. I had many ideas around this, but I felt like this kind of animation really helped me also to better explain what I'm trying to say with this project. So I believe that the simple details on the project, very tiny movements, very focused, like on most of the project, you can see the pillars of the building. You don't need to see the building. You're seeing the pillars. You understand where you are without having to use a real image of what happened. And it's important. And you focus on the detail. I have a few images of reality, especially on TV screens, because it is an important part to bring back. We are in this imaginative world now. Bring back the reality. Now, this is the reality. And I don't need to show it to you. I don't need to make you feel like you're inside the pit or inside the building where she was beaten or inside the cabaret she worked. I bring you all of that story, but with a few moments of images of reality, like pictures and those informations, I believe. I really believe that animation is one of the aspects of how this project is. So it's a very dense project. I know that. It's a very long experience. It's a half an hour experience, which is kind of huge in terms of VR, even for me, because it took me two years to do this. And we were only a team of three. It's me, my partner, who is the illustrator, and my assistant, and Alexio, which was the narrator. So it's a very small team. So it took a long time. But this kind of animation allowed me to do this project. I believe if I did it in 3D or more fast-paced animation would be really hard for me.
[00:20:40.654] Kent Bye: Yeah, this is certainly a project that sticks with me in the sense of how you lay out not only what happened to Gisberta, but also the media coverage. You mentioned that there's like 68 media articles and you end up showing a lot of those newspaper clippings. And sometimes you'll replace the Portuguese headline with the English headline after you show the initial version. So imagine that there is probably a Portuguese version and a version that's subtitled But I felt like the way that you break down the actual events of her death, based upon a lot of the testimony for these 14 teenagers that were responsible for the death of like over 48 hours of torturing and beating Gisberta, the way that you're laying it out, framing it through these newspaper articles that are covering the case. So in some ways, the news is centering this entire experience on these kids and the judge ultimately saying, oh, well, we don't wanna like ruin these kids' life after they've tortured and beat this trans person, which speaks to whose lives are being prioritized and not only the media coverage, but how there was a lot of injustice for how this actually played out in terms of accountability for these 14 kids. but you're reconstructing the events of what happened in a way that throughout the course of this piece you are using the subtitles to help direct and guide attention because you have arrows as to where to look but also these moments where you're reconstructing a timeline of events and giving a spatial sense of the time that's unfolding and giving us a way of looking back of where this began. I thought that was really an interesting use of the medium to use these media artifacts and create this spatial journey as you are telling the story. So I'd love to hear you elaborate on the use of these newspaper articles. I feel like this is another instance where it'd be difficult to have that same type of effect in a 2D film because you would have to basically create a montage sequence that then you wouldn't be able to look back on those previous moments. But I found myself of like, okay, where am I? Okay, how many days have it gone? And so I was looking back and forth just to see how the timeline of the events were unfolding and the evidence as you're presenting it, being able to look back around the heart of the actual murder that takes place.
[00:23:03.549] Sérgio Galvão Roxo: Yeah, I divided the project in five acts. And those five acts created the narrative where, since there is a lot of information and it's a lot of details you have to condensate in such a small space, I divided it in five. In the first act, it's until she's 18, where she leaves Brazil. So I used also some context of media. We have a TV excerpt of interviews with people in Brazil in the 1980s when she left. I have also newspapers, Brazilian newspapers, of how crimes against trans people and queer people in general were portrayed in the media. So also to help create the fact why she left Brazil. So in the first act, you have this traveling through her time until she's 18, how she told her parents she was trans and everything around it. On the second act, you jump to 2005. A few months before she was murdered and the first time she encountered three of the 14 kids. So in this second act, the English version of the project has subtitles. And I've used exactly what you said. I used arrows to help create a narrative inside of this space because you can freely see the experience. You can choose wherever you want to see it. And the second act is very important regarding that because I've decided to divide the 360 space into halves. In one half, you have what's happening inside the building where she was murdered. And the other half, you have her life story. So you can have this space. You choose to see what's happening to her, or do you choose to focus on her life? But you're always hearing her life. Even though you choose to see the things that the kids did to her, you're always hearing your life. So the focus is always pulling you back to her. And so you have this opportunity to see both ways. And the second act is the most dense in terms of information. So when you go back to the third act, we recapitulate some of the information regarding the project and The third act starts with a space dedicated to one of Gisberta's closest friends, Ruth Bianca, which was a big help in creating this project. And she was the one who had to go to identify the body of Gisberta. So I created a space of remembering to her as well, a space of respect to the fact that, like, There's a new perspective I need to insert in this project when I talk to her. The perspective of someone who cared about Gisberta. So I dedicated that space also to creating this inside the project. Like, I want the viewer to feel like they know she's Berta. So what happened to her starts to feel the injustice what happens to her, because you know her in a way. You know her love for our dogs. You love how she was a beautiful dancer. Now with the places she's been, You start with Brazil, like, OK, this is not really OK. Something's not weird. Then you go to the building. You're like, this is weird. Why is she here? What happened? And then you start to know more about her. And then you see a television appears. You see images of the building, of the police, of the firemen. recovering a body. What's this? Then you step into a morgue, you see a body bag. And so, in this third act, it's dedicated to the fact that you starting to have a closer relation to her story. Now you feel like, what's happened? What really happened here? So the third act is dedicated to that investigating side of things, a place also I put myself as a creator, like trying to see all of this information about what really happened here. So the third space, it's dedicated to that. The use of media throughout the project also makes that connection with the later parts of the movie. So it's always connecting in between acts. And also the fact that It's important media to express because this project is a piece of criticism against how the media portrayed. So it's in a way to show as well how they portrayed the subject, how they portrayed Gisberta and the case. as you said it, the media focused on the kids and focused on dismissing the kids. And it's important to see, like, this is not right. The information I'm hearing about Gisberta and now seeing how the media is, something's really off. This is not OK. So it's opening the questions and it's opening the interest of the person and trying for them to see, like, This is not right. I may not like this person, I may not care about trans people, but this is not right. What's happening here is not okay. So it's always opening questions. I use media against media in a way of making questions about how they use the media. And throughout the experience, on the fourth act of the experience, you really have the opportunity to be inside the more profound immersive aspects of VR, where you are surrounded by the kids and you are involved in the cover sheets and you feel like you're enclosed in this space. So all of this storytelling arc is to create those connections with before and after, so it's always interconnecting the information using the medium. And of course, in the Five Acts, it's a space dedicated to the memory of transphobic victims. You get surrounded by more than 1,600 names of people, known cases of people who were murdered in Portugal and Brazil, a space dedicated, because even though this project is about Gisperta, It's about all of their stories. especially in Portugal, since we have a few more cases, known cases. But even those, there's not really any information regarding it. This was the most mediatized case. Even two years ago, Angelita was found dead in the middle of a beach after calling her boyfriend, saying she was being followed. Nothing happened. There is no justice, there's no police reports, nothing. So, it's important to have this space in the final just dedicated to those lives because her story is a connection to all of these stories that are never been told. And they will never be told because there are no information about it. And it's really painful. as someone who also works in intervention. And I also have a degree in psychosocial affirmation therapy. So I want to work as a creator that has an important social impact on people. And so for me, it was really important in the end to have a space of memory, of remembrance of the death, I believe the final is very painful for me. Seeing all those names, it's the most painful for me. Of all the ways I've seen the film and the experience on the computer, on the phone or VR headset, it always makes me cry because even though I created this project, that time when I see all those names, I feel like we need to know all of these stories. And so it's important for me to have that space.
[00:32:02.826] Kent Bye: Yeah, I thought that was a really powerful way to end the piece with what feels like you're being immersed into a memorial, really honoring all the names of trans people who have died either in Portugal or Brazil. And the fourth act that you're talking about, it starts to really dig into some of the spatial affordances of being embodied and being surrounded and moments of like looking down and falling into a black pit and You're using actually the subtitles again to direct attention. I feel like there's some really powerful moments that you're using the affordances of VR. I would probably have a different experience with this piece if I was a native Portuguese speaker because I felt like a lot of my experience of this piece was reading the subtitles. And you said it is a dense piece. It does feel like a VR essay in a sense that it is a pretty continuous narration that's happening. And there were moments where I had to pause and go back just to take in what was happening outside of the subtitles because there was a lot of either text or stuff to also read and look at. And so I felt like the cognitive load as a non-Portuguese speaker meant that I had to pause or rewind or choose, am I going to look at what's happening around me or having to read the subtitles? And so I feel like this is a piece that would potentially benefit from either a native English version, or if you wanted to keep it, then spacing it out to allow the reading of the text. When I actually went back and watched the first half again, just to pay attention to more of the spatial storytelling, aside from having my attention drawn to the subtitles.
[00:33:39.196] Sérgio Galvão Roxo: No, no, exactly. The experience was mainly focused on the Portuguese and Brazilian society. So the whole experience in regarding to using subtitles, it's very different. And I believe as well that the fact that how the animation and how the storytelling is created, it's not deeply impactful if you have to pause and rewind. So I believe if it were more full of movements and distractions, I believe it would be harder to have the time to refocus, like go back a little bit and understand the information you're getting. Because I know and was one of the difficulties I had to create this project was the fact that I needed more time inside the experience and to create the experience. And unfortunately for me, I don't have the means to do it. It would take me even longer to create those spaces. I tried. I really tried to extend the experience and I even tried to divide the experience in parts But it all fell apart because I didn't have the means, the technical means, even my computer. It struggled to export this project. It took, I'm not joking, more than 30 hours to export the project. Because I have a very tiny computer, a very small thing. It's a very, really low budget project. I can tell you the full cost of the project was 80 euros. which was an SSD to have the project there because I didn't have space on my computer. It's this, and it's an example of how we can create a big thing with very small things. and all of these shortcomings of the project. And I believe they are shortcomings in the sense that I would prefer that you as a viewer could see the experience from A to B with no pauses and be immersed in the experience and have a full understanding of everything that you're seeing. But the fact that I wasn't able to do it because The narration, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe even the fact that you don't understand Portuguese, you can feel the intensity of the text. The narration helps you guide in that situation. And Alexia, which is an amazing voice actress, It's one of the first trans voice actors of Brazil, which was a very important part of creating this project was the representation of trans people. I'm not trans, but I'm using this space to talk about the prejudice and the discrimination against trans people. So I wanted the voice to be portrayed by a trans person to create representation regarding trans voices. And even though the narration is not a copy or a representation of Gisberto's voice, no, the narration here is a voice of discrimination against trans people. Alexia didn't feel comfortable doing this in English and I didn't have money to book another artist to do it in English. So all of these shortcomings kind of helped out as well in how you said in the act four of how the subtitles guide you. to the information. So I've used the means that I had and I tried to use the subtitles aesthetically and creating another narrative inside the narrative using the subtitles to help you understand the experience. As well, as I said it before, I believe the rhythm that I created with the project helped the fact that if you have to stop and go back a little bit, you not feel lost in the imagination and you quickly go back to the flow of the project. I believe it in that way. I believe in it that way, because it is what it is. This is the shortcomings of a very, very tiny project. And I've shown this project to a few friends that are not Portuguese and try with them to help me. Like, do you feel like in this scene, maybe I can give a few more seconds here, a bit more there, a bit more there? Yes, I've tried it. And I've added quite a few changes to the project to help it out. But in a way it was really hard for me to create a new version of the project in English. So I've used what I had. The Portuguese version is the same time as the English version because it was the limits I could have in this computer. More of that would be really hard. And not trying to put words on you, but I really believe that even though you're not Portuguese, you can understand the importance of these projects. And all of those shortcomings, even if you don't really feel like, oh, this could be interactive or could be more detailed in the images, like, oh, I can see a few pixels. And all of this, for me, the importance of that is the fact that VR can be used by people to create projects that don't need huge budgets or huge production companies to create it. This is a project created on Final Cut I didn't even have VR glasses during the project. I only had VR goggles for the last two months of the project I was making. So all of the storytelling was created by my own imagination of how to position the subjects, how the flow of the experience is. So yeah, for me, it's great that you notice, because it means you are interested in what you're seeing, you know? And I understand, and I feel like In a way, I kind of prefer that it is what it is, you know, because even for Portuguese people, it's really hard to see it just one time. I think you have to see it a few more times, because there's a lot of little details that are introduced around the project that you feel like, oh, I missed something. That's OK, because the focus really here is to create that connection with Gisberta's life and create that connection with the fact of empathy, you know, and to really try to open questions regarding yourself and trans people. Like, why do I have issues with this? Maybe I need to explore more of this. And maybe you have to see it again to understand more about her life. Yes. I think for some people that can be an issue. And I think in terms of even seeing other experience in VR, it's a different methodology of using VR. And I know that, but I guess it felt right as a tool of social education that you can have this opportunity to see it again. That's why I didn't create an application of the project. It's a 360 video. That's one of the reasons of accessibility. The fact that I can show it to you, I can show it on a tablet or a phone in Brazil to anyone or in a school everywhere. This is a very important aspect for me as a tool of education is the fact that it can be versatile. Everyone can see it in a way. But yeah, I believe you have to see it one more time.
[00:41:22.749] Kent Bye: Well, I think if I was watching it in a festival context, I probably would have watched it without pausing and would have made it through. I feel like the places where I felt like I needed to either pause or go back the most was when there was a lot of collaging of news articles and quotes, and it almost felt like a PowerPoint presentation that was happening with a bunch of text to read, but at the same time, the focus of attention with the subtitles was happening, it was difficult to do both of those things at the same time as a non-native Portuguese speaker. And so it was in that third section, I think, that was probably the worst offender of that in terms of having so much dense information that was also being presented in the timeline. Because like you said, it's an investigation, and so it's the phase of the piece where you're trying to really figure out what happened. And so you're getting direct evidence and testimony and newspaper reportings of what was reported versus the other independent research. So you're really aggregating a lot of the research that happened in that chapter. It was just a little bit information overload in terms of trying to consume it all. But yeah, I guess the overall takeaway that I have from the piece is that it's just an extremely heartbreaking story to dig into not only what happened, but also do this other additional media critique of deconstructing the gross injustice of how this was being covered. And that cultural bias that leads to even more trans people dying at the end, you see the impact of just by focusing on this one story, you're able to say, well, this is just one story, but there's actually 1600 other stories that we're not going into, but this piece is connecting what's happening into that larger tragedy that's happening there, both in Portugal and in Brazil and around the world.
[00:43:06.385] Sérgio Galvão Roxo: Yeah, that was one of the things that I wanted to create an English version because this is a worldwide issue. And even to have this experience there at South By was very important for me because not only as a first time creator of VR, but also the fact that United States of America are having issues regarding trans rights. even all around the world, queer rights are being threatened. And I felt like this is important to create a version that can be experienced by other people. That's why I created an English version, even though, yes, the investigative part is very dense, even for Portuguese people, it's very dense, because in a way, I want you to also feel what I felt. reading all of that information, like, what the hell is happening here? What the hell is this? Because you have how many audiences? I don't remember. There's so many audiences in terms of courtrooms. And you have the first part of the investigation. And then the judges decided to delete all of the information before and create a new one. And then you have the 13 kids. Then you have one of the older kids that at the time was 16. So he can be trialed as an adult. And so he had a separate trial and they change all the information between one and another and the other. So it's so many information. And then you have reports from the firemen and from the nurses and even from the medical staff saying, no, this happened like this and that and that. And then the court says, we don't know. So we're deleting that information. And it's horrible, horrible. And you see so many injustices in so many information. Even you said it in the beginning, the court saying that why are you going to make harder for life of these kids? They've been through enough. They killed someone, but they've been through enough. And so, a dismissal of everything. Do you know one of the things that before you fell into the pits, it's her sister telling the courtroom signed the obituary as cause of death, drowning. She wasn't murdered. She drowned. Even that is horrible. How? We can understand a few things about the case. You can say, okay, maybe the kids came from a very difficult background, or as the psychologists in the movie say, if they had social activities, maybe they wouldn't even need to beat her. If they had the possibility to play sports. What? How so? So you're saying if they had a football around them, they wouldn't beat someone? Okay, okay. So all of this information and all of these details for me at the time I was exploring this was like, what's this? What's happening here? Come on. How much can you destroy the truth just to feel better yourself with it? In the Portuguese version, I wanted to create that sensation and I felt it became really harder for non-natives to understand all of that information because I have to add the subtitles. So we have the boards and the boards are inspired like crime scenes. where you have the birds. The birds are always the connection with the kids. There are always 14 birds looking at you. So you have the birds detailing the days. They are known because one of the details that I've inserted in the text, not in the subtitles, in the text presented is like two years after they made an interview with one of the kids that said, oh, no, we're not 14, we're more. We've been there a lot longer. We only told you that it was a week, so nothing is known. We don't know anything. The only thing we know is that she was tortured, and she died, and she was murdered, and it was awful, and nobody did anything. And so all of this information, I wanted to feel like, put yourself in the discomfort of knowing all of this, and feel like, I don't really get it, what's happening. And I felt, in a way, at least in the Portuguese version, that would be easier to digest all that information. Yeah, I know. But still, it creates that sensation of discomfort, like, what's all of this? why I'm being bombarded with all of this. And I felt like that's an important subject, because it feels like a way to connect with the truth of the experience, of the truth of the story that's being told. This is a biopic. This is not a fiction. This is reality. You see it through an animation, you see it through a virtual space, but this is a real story. But you were saying,
[00:48:35.143] Kent Bye: Yeah, as you were talking about all that, I was just reflecting on how the medium of VR allows you to create these poster boards of all the aggregation of all the data points and information. You start the story by saying this is a story without a middle. Because middle details are so fuzzy, but yet you're drawing upon so many different sources from court hearings, from testimony, from newspaper clippings and articles and reports. And you're trying to piece together a timeline, but there's a lot of ambiguity of that timeline in a lot of different perspectives of the 14 kids who were involved with this. had different conflicting perspectives and multiple trials because one of them was older. So yeah, just you're able to do your best of trying to aggregate all that information and to put the viewer into that same type of place of having to piece together these little incremental bits of the story to try to come up with what the larger story is. And yeah, I did feel that experience of recreating that investigation. VR is a medium being able to aggregate multitudes of different perspectives and allow you through the text medium to start to piece those together. Sometimes within VR yourself, you can take multiple perspectives. Perspective thinking is something that is the academic term for trying to put yourself into the place of another person. There's been a lot of controversy around the quote-unquote empathy machine aspects of VR and also some potential problematic aspects of trying to embody someone's perspective and then come away thinking that you may have the experience of what it is like to be that person. I feel like in this piece, you are doing some perspective taking, but I'm not walking away knowing what it feels like to be a trans woman, but it's more of here I'm being surrounded by people and here is a way that if I was being tortured and being surrounded, it's given me the claustrophobia aspects of that. but it's not actually giving me the experience of being tortured. So I'm wondering if you could elaborate on that, because I know there's certainly a lot of larger discussions around perspective taking and imping the machine and how you were trying to navigate some of those sensitivities.
[00:50:44.625] Sérgio Galvão Roxo: you really said what I felt during the process of my own investigation. All of the information that I received about the fact that, is this an empathy machine? Is this not an empathy machine? Are you really able to say that you experienced someone else's life using VR and all of that? It was a very important discussion myself regarding the creation of this project because yes, I've used perspective taking tasks and I use it in a way that will not feel like you can embody truthfully someone else, but you can embody the experience of being surrounded, the claustrophobia of being that, the fear that you would have seeing all of that, of having 14 kids around you, surrounding you with sticks. I'm not trying to portray you as being Gisberta. and trying to put yourself in that situation, not in Gisberto's shoes, but in your own shoes. Try to imagine being trapped in this situation. And I also believe that, yes, I've read a few papers regarding is this empathy or sympathy. And I do believe In a way, empathy also is a very misguided word as well, or misused word, because empathy can be more related. I've used in my master's an investigator, Jean Bilsacki, which felt important to me to use it, like empathy as a muscle. that can be regenerated and created and enlarged and can be destroyed as well. So we have to see empathy in three different stages, like cognitive, emotionally. I've used the information that I received with a grain of salt, you know, like I'm not trying to portray or say be Gisberta or be trans or be a victim of transphobia. No, no, no way. I want to say that because in no way you can show really what happened. I don't know what happened. I'm not trans. I'm not a victim of transphobia. You are not a victim of transphobia. So how can I use this space and say that? I don't want to say that. But I want you to feel, in a way, the emotional relation with that. So I want yourself to put in the shoes of being trapped in that situation, not feeling like you're Gisperta. I've used that act for symbolic representation. of that. That's why the characters don't move. Only yourself is moving. And so I'm not trying to portray the violence she has or not trying to portray what it would feel like to have that violence being portrayed to yourself. No, I'm allowing you to feel like the emotional connotation of what happened here. In a way, I created a distance on the empathy machine ideal, because I understand why it's not an empathy machine, but can be used as an empathy machine. Because I believe empathy as a way of building information, of knowledge. So I don't feel like empathy is a reaction you can have, or one of the things that Zaki says, you don't have a predetermined level of empathy. You can train yourself in empathy, you can train your empathy, you can be more empathic, you can be less empathic in different aspects, emotionally, cognitively. So I wanted to create this space of perspective-taking tasks, yes, of imagining yourself in that situation, but not in someone else's shoes, in your own shoes. You know, because I don't want to feel like people could use this to feel like, oh, no, I now I know how is it to be a victim of transphobia? No, no, please don't say that. No one can ever say that. The only people who can say that are victims of transphobia. And I don't want to take that place. So, yeah, it was a very difficult part of the project in terms of the academic part and also in how to translate that information to the project. Because in a way, you have those perspective-taking tasks. They are being used constantly in the fact of the project. You pass through various stages of placement inside of our story. One of the terms that I really enjoyed and felt like this could be important to the project is immersive witnessing. You know, so you're a witness to the situation more than you are in the situation, because the situation cannot be quantified, you know, or expressed. So I think in terms of my own perspective regarding the use of VR as an empathy tool, I think the focus and the intent of what we are using VR, it's the difference. You know, because if you have the understanding and the knowledge not to say something like experience being this, that makes a difference in terms of how you're using the empathy abilities of VR. Because I don't want to create sympathy. Sympathy as a distance. I want to dismantle that distance. But I want to be conscious about the fact that you'll never be able to be in someone else's shoes. Not with VR, not with anything. Maybe later we'll find something that can be more like that. But in the meantime, you have the opportunity to feel yourself in a situation and symbolic representation of the situation. That's what I've created, a symbolic representation, never direct representation of what that could be.
[00:57:04.687] Kent Bye: Yeah, as you're talking about your intentions around that, I'm thinking about that fourth act and also just how there's different tonal shifts that happen throughout the course of this piece from the more biopic aspects of talking about Gisbert's life and then moving into the more true crime phase where you're digging into the details of what happened, here are the evidence, here's the facts, and then moving much more into this poetic representation and a lot of metaphoric and symbolic representations that allow you to have a little bit more dynamic animations in that part. Things start moving a little bit quicker. You kind of understand the story of what happened. And then now this is a chance to really explore the medium of VR to expand into this immersive witnessing aspect into the final part. Then you have more of a virtual memorial that you're allowing to really bear witness to the names in a way that kind of evoking the idea of going to like any sort of war memorial or Holocaust memorial where you see a lot of the names that are there, you're kind of memorializing them around you. And so, yeah, I just thought overall, lots of really beautiful ways of using the technology to really honor the life of Gisberta. So I guess as we start to wrap up, I'm curious what you think the ultimate potential of virtual reality and immersive storytelling might be and what it might be able to enable.
[00:58:28.528] Sérgio Galvão Roxo: A really hard question. The full potential. In reality, I don't know how to answer that question because it still is in its infancy of what can be. In terms of how can it be used, I believe there's beautiful use cases of VR. I think there I've seen beautiful experiences and I'm like, this is amazing. And the way VR, XR, what can be used, we still don't even know how deep this can go. And especially now with generative AI content, what would that mean in terms of creating and imagining? But I believe VR is a tool of imagination and narrative, and we are humans of narratives and imagination. we live and thrive through imagination. We consume imagination and narrative. So this is a beautiful medium to explore that. And where will it go? I don't know. I don't really know because we have to be socially conscious of everything we're doing, you know, because VR can be really painful. VR can be really traumatic as well. I believe that can happen because you're immersed in space. But yes, of course, you can take off the glasses, but that's not reality. You're in a situation, the situation you're not being able to retrieve yourself from the situation. And the same thing can happen in VR. And there have been cases of harassment and trauma regarding VR and everything. So I believe there's a beautiful future for VR and XR. I think the more creators can use this platform, the more conscious we can be of these potentialities and also of the harmful aspects of it. It really needs infancy. In my perspective, I hope that VR goes beyond gaming and more into social, into social aspects, social documentaries, because I believe it's a beautiful medium to express. But yeah, I think The future looks bright and more accessible because it's a very inaccessible medium still, even though you have Quest 2 and Quest 3 and Pico 4 as well within a lower price range. It's still a very expensive platform. And even here in Portugal, We have one tiny film festival that has a very few, like three headsets that show one or two projects. We don't even really have a VR festival here as well. So in fact, Meta doesn't even sell quests in Portugal. And for me, it's going to be the experience of going to South By to see the other side of XR and VR for me, because In a way, some places, XR is really well developed and the other places is still underdeveloped. But I do believe that we have to be really socially conscious of what we're doing in VR to it become a more sustainable and accessible. Because not trying to extend myself in this, because one of the biggest issues with every medium type is the curation of the information. You have this with the social medias, with the movies, with the newspapers, with everything. You have to curate in a way the information because people use every tool they can have to express what they want to express. Maybe there's some nefarious intentions or interpretations of what they want to do with it. And so we have to be conscious about it and for XR and VR to become a good tool. Because in this stage, with not as many creators and not as many content, because there's a lot of content already, but still very undemocratized, it's not accessible to everyone. But we need to prepare when those informations get to everyone and everyone starts creating as well. So I don't know what the future will be, but I hope we have the conscience of that going forward.
[01:02:59.924] Kent Bye: Beautiful. And is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?
[01:03:06.453] Sérgio Galvão Roxo: I don't know. I think, in my opinion, I believe we have a long way in terms of accessibility. And in a way, I still haven't experienced a lot of connection regarding other creators and myself. there's a bit of a distance. So I think it's important to understand that VR can be a tool. VR is a tool and VR can be a tool to a diverse general people. So we can be house creators and small creators and we have to create a space where everyone can interconnect and talk and experience and understand each other. So maybe that's maybe be more understanding of how, in a way, privilege is distributed in society.
[01:04:04.220] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, Sergio, thanks so much for joining me here today. I really enjoyed getting to know you. Her name was Gerberta and talking about not only your process, but also all the different phases that you're telling the story and the different ways that you're diving into different modalities and critiquing the media and memorializing the life of Giberta, but also just trying to bring awareness to the larger issues of both the culture and the media, and how these issues are being treated, like we talked about. Certainly, the ways that this type of transphobia impacts the lives of people around the world. And yeah, I think this is a great example of what you can do with low budget DIY VR to still tell these really important vital stories and to also push forward the medium for what it can do. So thanks again for taking the time to help break it all down.
[01:04:54.462] Sérgio Galvão Roxo: Thank you so much.
[01:04:55.986] Kent Bye: So thanks again for listening to this interview. This is usually where I would share some additional takeaways, but I've started to do a little bit more real-time takeaways at the end of my conversations with folks to give some of my impressions. And I think as time goes on, I'm going to figure out how to use XR technologies within the context of the VoicesOfVR.com website itself to do these type of spatial visualizations. So I'm putting a lot of my energy on thinking about that a lot more right now. But if you do want a little bit more in-depth conversations around some of these different ideas around immersive storytelling, I highly recommend a talk that I gave on YouTube. You can search for StoryCon Keynote, Kent Bye. I did a whole primer on presence, immersive storytelling, and experiential design. So, that's all that I have for today, and I just want to thank you all for listening to the Voices of VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listener-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you could become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. Thanks for listening.
